TIPS for Studying the Course Workbook

I thought I would share some tips for studying the workbook lessons, based on my own experience.

Other than the specific instructions given to us for each lesson, this is what I do.

Every morning I sit with a clear mind, approach the lesson with reverence, and simply read it. Then I read it again, slowly, sentence by sentence, allowing the understanding of each sentence to come to me. If I’m feeling resistance with a sentence, or the meaning is not coming to me immediately, I invite the Holy Spirit into my mind to read it with me. Just about every time I give the HS room to come into my mind, the meaning comes into my awareness in an unexpected and delightful way.

When I don’t capture the meaning, I realize it isn’t my time yet. The Course says that if you don’t capture the understanding, it is not that it is beyond your scope, it is simply not your time to receive it yet. In this case I gently release my need to understand it, go on to the next sentence, knowing that when the time comes I will receive the meaning of what I just read.

Once I receive a feel for the whole lesson (or review section) I then go back to the central thought, (or lesson heading), and discover that the entire meaning of the lesson is compressed into that one central thought. The course says that “meaning comes from the general fusing of everything into one meaning.” And so the central thought ends up representing the lesson in its entirety.

I then simply hold that central thought in my consciousness, and notice that, like a muscle, the longer I hold it the better it works on me, burning away the unconscious guilt from my unconscious mind. This is how Holy Spirit heals our unconscious guilt, lesson by lesson, precept on top of precept, day by day.

Holy Spirit said to me once that “As you read this material I am boring down into your consciousness.” This tells me that doing this Course is ultimately how we take on the Holy Spirit’s thought system of Love and Light and release the ego’s thought system of separation and despair.